Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Winston O Boogie jr
And because the physicians are being paid an attractive flat salary, do people believe that there won't be pressure from those higher up on the corporate ladder to see as many patients as possible?
My experience in dealing with and working for big businesses is that the people on the front lines whoa re dealing with the customers are the ones that want to give good service. It's the people above them that don't allow that to happen.
Did I read that every doctor will have "only" 1500 patients? If you do the math and a doctor sees each of his patients once every six months then he has to see 58 patients a week. If he gives each patient a half hour, that will take up 29 hours of a forty hour work week. That doesn't include time for paperwork or reviewing a patient's record ahead of a visit. Many doctors also need to see their patients when they are in a hospital and of course if the patient is having a specific problem, the doc might need to see him more than twice a year. In fact, my doctors sees me every six months.
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Of course there will be pressure to see more patients per hour once the developer is subsidizing the system less after its formation is complete. I was addressing the "Marcus Welby" concept and goal of not having the doctor pay directly dependent on how many patients they see and how many tests they run--because with Medicare and insurance that pays only what Medicare pays (less than cost), which is the only way to both pay the bills of the practice and to stay afloat financially.
To me it looks like they're using the less costly employees (PA's who are good at their scope of practice) to do the less complex work for which medicare and insurance pay less, to free up more time for the drs. to do the most complex work that the more complex patients present. But so far, the mandate to feed the computer files on every patient is eating up time that could/should be spent on patient care.
How many chief financial officers of a large company have to spend 40% of their time doing
data entry on an iPad instead of financial analysis and decision-making? That is what the mandated electronic medical records software (different in every practice) is doing to drs.
Marcus Welby didn't have to do data entry and then buy costly malpractice insurance for when he got sued and his patient records would be put under a microscope in court for not doing every expensive, technological test known to man, only to cover his butt for just such an occasion.